December 32018

Neural engineering startup BIOS has raised $6 million CAD ($4.5 million USD) with a mix of investors from the UK, Canada, and Silicon Valley. The Cambridge,UK-based company is also opening its first research and development office outside the UK in Montreal.

The funding was led by Real Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and Ariel Poler, founder of the Human Augmentation syndicate on AngelList. Participating investors include Endure Capital, Heuristic Capital Partners, K5 Ventures, and Charles Songhurst, former GM corporate strategy at Microsoft.

BIOS is developing neural interfaces to enable AI-based treatments on organs and nerve systems. The company initially focused on the first implementation of its neural interface technology in its “USB connector for the body” product, the Prosthetic Interface Device (PID). This is designed to allow amputees to connect a range of prostheses directly to the nervous system, which is heading for clinical trials in the near future.

The company plans to use the funding to double its technical team and develop its core neural interface technology. The company will expand access to its neural data and biomarker tools, allowing partners to develop disease-specific treatments on top of its data and interface.

“This funding round marks a new chapter in our company’s history as it gives us the opportunity to leverage our full potential technically and develop our product for the wider ecosystem,” said Emil Hewage, co-founder and CEO at BIOS. “We have an incredible team already made up of experts from a huge range of fields, that come together to make this incredibly complex technology work seamlessly. Their expertise ranges from machine learning, neuroscience and medical robotics to biotechnology and medical specialists, but we’re looking forward to growing the team even further and to expand into Montreal.”

“BIOS has enormous potential to become the platform on which all future neural interfaces are built – a great example of Real’s belief in advancing the development and application of AI in key industries,” said Alan MacIntosh, partner at Real Ventures. “We invested in BIOS because of the team’s world-class expertise, their full-stack approach, and their strategic progress interfacing to our bodies via the peripheral nervous system.”